Talor Gooch saw his 10-stroke overnight lead take a significant hit before finishing with a three-shot victory in the inaugural LIV Australia tournament Sunday, April 23, in Adelaide.
Gooch followed up a pair of 10–under-par 62 rounds with a 1–over 73 on Sunday to card a 19–under 197 at the Grange Golf Club. The 31-year-old posted a birdie at the par-3 fifth hole, bogeys on the seventh and eighth holes and a double-bogey at the par-5 10th.
Gooch was able to halt his slide with birdies on the 11th and 13th holes en route to capturing $4 million of the $20 million purse. He was able to hold off Anirban Lahiri of India, who carded a 65 on Sunday to reside at 200 for the tournament.
“Golf is just really hard,” Gooch said. “It’s hard to put back-to-back days together like I did and even harder to do it three times in a row. I actually played fine out there today. The golf gods, I think, said, ‘We don’t want this first win to be easy on you.’
“Had a couple bad breaks here and there, so it made things interesting, but it was cool to kind of overcome the adversity and dig deep after I made a double on No. 10. It was kind of a point of we’re either going to dig deep and do this or you’re going to stumble coming in. It was cool to dig deep and get the job done.”
Patrick Reed (65), Cameron Tringale (67), Pat Perez (67) and The Open champion Cameron Smith (66) of Australia each finished at 15–under for the tournament. Reed officially claimed third place in points via the tiebreaker.
South Africans Dean Murmester (67) and Charl Schwartzel (68) joined Peter Uihlein (66) to finish in a tie for seventh place, one stroke better than Dustin Johnson (67).
Speaking of Johnson, he credited his 4Aces team—which also includes Reed, Uihlein and Perez—for finishing with a LIV Golf-record 47-under to win by a stroke over the RangeGoats.
“Obviously, it was a great week,” Johnson said. “All four guys played well. To get our first win outside the U.S. was nice.”
Phil Mickelson (69) joined Brooks Koepka (70) in finishing in a 10-way tie for 11th place at 12-under par.
Chase Koepka finished two strokes in back of that contingent, however he captured the shot of the day with a hole-in-one on the par-3 12th hole. He finished with a 66 on Sunday.
“A once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Chase Koepka, who recorded the second hole-in-one of LIV’s brief history. “It’s something to always remember. Yeah, it’s pretty cool. I can just say that. I don’t know if I can duplicate what I just did out there, but it'll be really cool coming back here because I know everyone will remember it.”
